


make your sweat roll backwards

by inlovewithnight



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Discipline, M/M, nhl dystopia, ritualized rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 14:26:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5420519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the league discipline of last resort, the one nobody talks about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make your sweat roll backwards

Jamie gets called in for a meeting when they get back from a five-game road trip. Spontaneous meetings are never good; he double and triple-checks himself in the mirror before he leaves the house and drives over to Dr. Pepper Arena. He even wears a tie. Not a whole suit, because _maybe_ it’s not something bad, since his agent isn’t coming, too, but… a tie seems right. Showing that he’s taking it seriously that they’re calling him in.

Instead of going in the usual entrance for practice, he has to walk around to the executive offices. It makes the back of his neck itch. This is fucked up.

Jim’s assistant is waiting for him and shows him to the small conference room. He stops just outside the door, looking inside for a minute before he opens it. Jim and Lindy are there; so are Curt and James, and Les. Stan is there. Which… yeah. Okay. Player relations is there, it’s a discipline thing, just like he knew it was going to be. And the fact that they’re _all_ there, the whole crew. 

Jamie looks at the assistant. “Do you know if it’s… am I getting settled?”

“I wasn’t told, Mr. Benn.” She offers him a small smile. “You’d better go in, though, they’re waiting.”

Jamie takes a breath and nods, then opens the door. Everyone stands up and smiles at him, but they’re not warm smiles, they’re not… nice. They’re _we’re doing this for your own good_ smiles. His stomach sinks and twists as he takes the chair Lindy indicates for him.

“Jamie,” Jim says, and Jamie tries to school his face into something attentive and interested and contrite. His heart is beating really fast, though, and he’s starting to sweat. He probably isn’t selling it.

“We need to talk about the penalties you’ve been taking,” Jim continues, and Jamie’s heart sinks. He’s definitely getting settled, and there’s nothing he can do about it now.

**

Jamie was eighteen when he went to the Rockets. Eighteen was old enough to get settled, but not a lot of major junior teams carried it out. He _heard_ about it; they all heard rumors and stories, that went all the way down the line. 

The first whispers started in mites and midgets, even though they were all too young to know what it meant, then. It was a vague thing that happened if you played in the big show, a million miles away.

In the BCHL it got a little more clear, a little more real. _That’s the kind of shit that’ll get you settled, Benn_ , his coaches yelled more than once. Older guys shoving the younger ones around in the locker room and saying they needed a settling to learn how to behave, with enough physical meaning behind it that the understanding started to sink in.

But Kelowna. In Kelowna he got the talk at orientation, he got the booklet that described the procedure in medical terms. It was confusing, and he didn’t really get it, but he knew it was some serious shit that might have to be done if you couldn’t control your temper and play the way you were told. Fighting was good if it wasn’t wasteful, or if you were an enforcer. If you couldn’t stop yourself from fighting when you were told otherwise, then, well. Being settled was one of the options on the table.

He never had it done in Kelowna, even when he fucked up. None of the other guys his age did, either. He heard once or twice about a twenty-year-old who maybe did, or maybe it was some other discipline, nobody was really sure.

He didn’t really know how different the NHL would be.

**

He sits quietly while Jim and the others run through his penalties to-date in the season. He can’t argue with any of it. Yeah, he did that, and that, too; he’s hardly going to argue about it. 

“Well, Jamie?” Lindy asks finally, and Jamie shrugs, staring down at his hands folded together on the table.

“I’m just trying to win games, sir.”

“This isn’t the leadership we need from you. Some of these are very cheap shots.”

“I’ll… I’ll work harder.” He doesn’t know what else to say. 

“I know you will, Jamie.” Jim taps his pen on the table. “Unfortunately that’s not quite good enough.”

Fuck. “Do I… isn’t there a warning? In the past I’ve gotten a warning before…”

“The penalties _were_ your warning, Jamie.” Jim’s voice is stern now. “You’ve been here long enough to know better. You’re the _captain_. You know what’s expected of you. You can’t really think you’re going to be babied anymore.”

He swallows hard and nods, still staring at his hands. His knuckles hurt from being clenched so tight. He should stop. “Of course, sir.”

“The procedure will be carried out immediately. Get it over with, learn your lesson, do better tomorrow. All right?”

There’s nothing he can say. “Yes, sir.”

“Caroline will walk you down to the training rooms.”

“I know where they are, sir.”

“Of course you do, Jamie.” Jim’s voice is deceptively warm. It makes Jamie’s hands hurt even more. And his neck, his jaw. Everywhere his muscles are pulling tight with tension. “But Caroline will walk you there just the same.”

 _I won’t try to run_ , Jamie thinks, nodding again. _I know better._ But it wasn’t good to argue.

“Am I dismissed?” he asks.

Jim glances at the others, who all nod in turn. They’re like a line-up of animatronic dolls.

“Thank you,” Jamie mutters, and gets up from his chair. 

Caroline the assistant is waiting outside the door with her carefully-affixed smile. She must have known when he asked her before the meeting. There’s no way she could know now if she didn’t know then. She wasn’t in the room.

Jamie can’t blame her for lying to him, though. Who wants to be the one bringing bad news?

**

His NHL orientation included a video about the procedure. It cleared up a lot. It scared him a lot.

It started out with the history; when the teams were owned by guys who made their money out of stuff like oil and cars and whatever. Livestock. One guy who made his money in livestock. And they were all figuring out how this league thing was going to work, how the players were going to be managed, how much power everybody was going to have and how it was divided up and what they could do.

And this guy told them about how sometimes when a cow or a horse was moody and belligerent and a pain in the ass, they needed to be bred. To get their hormones back in line. To settle them down. 

So at first they called it _breeding_ , but then as they refined things over the years somebody or other decided that just didn’t sound good, wasn’t polite enough. So they called it _settling_. But it all went back to the same place, the same idea, that if a player wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do, what he needed was a good hard fuck to bring him back in line.

Jamie didn’t totally get it, then. Even as the video went on to explain the injection and the precautions in place and the restrictions the collective bargaining agreement placed on how often it could be done, he still didn’t _totally_ get it. Maybe seventy percent. 

He thought he would be lucky and never find out. Some guys never had to have it done. He could be one of them. He could… he could be good.

Even sitting there in the room after the screen went to black, he knew he couldn’t.

**

One of the assistant trainers, Keith, is waiting for him in the hallway. “Jamie,” he says, nodding to Caroline. “Come with me.”

Jamie follows him past the regular exam rooms, the whirlpool room, the room with the stuff for electrostim, all the places they usually go, to the room at the end of the hall that’s always dark and locked. Keith unlocks the door and steps inside to turn on the light. Jamie doesn’t have to look; he knows. 

Keith sets a small plastic kit on the table at the center of the room and pulls out a stethoscope, a blood-pressure cuff, the thing that takes someone’s temperature off their forehead, and two syringes, one with a needle and one without. “Okay, Jamie,” he says calmly. “You know the drill. Is there anyone we should call to come get you?”

Jamie shakes his head. “Just a cab.”

“All right.” Keith nods and holds his hand out. “Your phone.”

Jamie sends a text to Jordie before he hands it over. _Got called in for settling._ He doesn’t have anything else to say even if there was time to. Jordie knows what it means. 

Keith takes his phone and puts it in the kit. “Let’s do your vitals.”

His vitals are fine. Elevated from nerves, but Keith knows how to account for that and wave it off. “Get undressed,” he says after he goes through everything. “I’ll step out for a moment and be right back.”

This part is a test, Jamie always thinks, because when Keith leaves the room the syringes stay on the table, loaded and ready to go. Jamie could break them. He could jab Keith with the one with the needle when he comes back. He could do a lot of stuff, but he isn’t going to, because he’s already in trouble and he knows it. Why would he make things worse for himself? That would be dumb, and he’s here to remember to be less dumb. 

He takes his clothes off, folds them carefully on the table, and waits. He doesn’t touch the syringes.

He knows better.

**

The first time was bad. 

It got better after that, once he knew what to expect.

And after all it was never really about _violence_. It was about discipline. It was for the team.

The team was the most important thing. The center of the world. Jamie was new but he wasn’t a kid. He knew where his priorities needed to be. He tried to do better.

They made him Captain, which didn’t make him exempt, but… he had to be doing _something_ right.

**

Keith comes back carrying a heavy leather collar. It’s huge; Jamie knows that when Keith buckles it on him, it will cover from the crease of his jaw all the way down to his collarbone. He can’t even drop his chin with that thing on. It weighs a goddamn ton, and it buckles tight enough that every breath draws attention to it, and even though the metal ring in front doesn’t touch his skin, he always thinks that he can feel it anyway, and that it’s _cold_.

“Here we are,” Keith murmurs, and buckles it in place. Jamie swallows hard and tries to get used to the pressure on his throat. His heart is going double-time. He hates this. He hates this.

“Go ahead to the table.” Keith is so businesslike about this. Jamie always wonders if this bothers the trainers, at all. If they feel weird about it. If they act like it’s no big deal so they don’t have to freak out. That’s why he acts like it’s no big deal, after all.

He bends over the table and waits, blinking at the blurry shadow his face makes on the black surface, not quite a reflection. There’s a heavy metal ring at the center of the table top, heavy leather handcuffs at the two far corners, matching cuffs for his ankles on the near legs. It’s adjustable, like the table at a veterinarian’s office; Keith adjusts the height once Jamie’s bent over, before he attaches a snap to the table ring and the ring on Jamie’s collar, holding him in place. Jamie rests his forehead on the table, trying to steady his breath, while Keith fastens all four cuffs.

He hates this.

His nose presses against the table, too. No way to avoid it. So many guys get their noses broken when they’re being settled. There must be something the trainers or the bosses could do, to keep that from happening. But they don’t, so it must be part of the whole thing on purpose. An extra bit of punishment, a reminder that players need to behave and do what they’re told.

Keith’s hand rests at the center of his back. “Injection first. Are you ready?”

Jamie nods and closes his eyes. A little pinch on the curve of his ass, the needle sinking in, the chemicals zinging through his system. He’ll feel it in a minute or two.

But first, the other; Keith’s hand sliding lower on his ass, opening him up more, fingers against the entrance to his body, and then the other syringe nudging him, pushing inside, the cold gush of lubricant inside him. No stretching, just slickness. Another reminder.

Keith pats his back and steps away. Jamie opens his eyes again, catches his breath, hears the soft click of the syringes being gathered together in Keith’s hand. The blur of his stack of clothes disappears from his peripheral vision.

“About ten minutes for everything to kick in,” Keith says. “Try to relax and breathe normally. I’ll see you after.”

Jamie nods again, and Keith leaves. He appreciates that. It’s better to be alone, when it starts. It’s humiliating enough alone. If someone else was there it just might kill him.

**

He knew that every team approached it differently. Some teams had the captain participate in every settling, unless the captain was the one having it done, in which case one of the A’s stepped in. On other teams the captain was never involved. Jamie didn’t know what the Stars had done before, but management had never asked him to be involved in disciplining any of the players since he’d become captain, and he definitely wasn’t going to volunteer.

He was never sure how much to offer the other guys afterwards. It wasn’t something anybody _talked_ about, ever, but should he acknowledge it at all? Should he give a shoulder-bump or a nod or… anything? Or should he just pretend it never happened at all and let them do the same?

When he was the one being called into the room, he preferred pretending. He ended up doing the same for everybody else because the alternative just seemed… really hard and kind of risky. Too much.

**

By the time the door opens again, the shot has kicked in. Jamie is soaked with sweat, every inch of his skin feeling hot and raw. Sweat runs down his forehead and drips from his eyelashes and the tip of his nose onto the table. He can feel it running down his back, in the cleft of his ass, along his thighs. His body is running at 110%, his heart thudding in his chest, his breath quick and rough. 

His dick is hard enough to ache, so hard it must be swollen and dark. He can’t see, but he knows his body, knows what this level of hard looks like. His body wants to grind against the edge of the table even though his mind knows that won’t help at all and will hurt more later. 

He hates this.

The door opens and closes quietly, but from the corner of his eye Jamie can see the person who entered the room. A guy, tall and sturdy, already naked. That’s all he ever knows about who settles him. He never sees their faces, and they never talk. It could be anybody—could be one of the guys he skates with every day, could be someone from down in Cedar Park, could even be someone the office hired and brought in for the gig. He doesn’t know.

Once—just one time—he was at a fundraiser or publicity thing with the Texas Stars guys and when their captain walked by him he smelled cologne or aftershave, something, and it went through him like electricity, a sense-memory of this stupid room so sharp it stopped him in his tracks for a minute. But only the one time. He didn’t ask, and nobody else said anything.

Hands run down his back, warm and heavy. Fingers slip between his ass cheeks, spreading the lube a little. Jamie’s breath hitches in his chest, tight and painful. He tries to remind himself to relax but the shot takes that option away from him; his body is operating on its own right now and he doesn’t get a say in what it does. It just wants.

The hands hold him open and he feels the thick blunt head of a cock bump against him once, slide between his cheeks, bump him again, not _quite_ press inside. He whines, unable to stop himself, and his face burns even hotter. He sounds desperate, needy, awful. He is all of those things. He just. He needs this guy to fuck him, hard, right now, or his heart will keep racing and he’ll die. He needs all the heat and chemicals fucked out of him. He needs it.

Another bump, another slide, and then finally, finally, pressure against his opening, steady and increasing and then the head pops inside. He cries out, his teeth hitting the table and sending sharp pain echoing back into his skull, but it’s hard to care because the other guy is finally inside him, pushing deep. He’s forcing Jamie’s body open and it hurts, it hurts, but the stretch and burn of it fade into feeling good, too, because he _needs it_. It’s all mixed up and he can’t tell the difference, pleasure and pain and need all turning into the same thing.

Hands are still on him, heavy and warm, anchoring him in place just like the cuffs and the snap on his collar. He can’t move, and he hates it, but it’s a relief, too. All he can do is give up and let it happen. He has to surrender.

**

Tyler liked having company, after a settling. He came right out and said it, the first time he got called in after the trade. If he hadn’t done that, Jamie probably never would’ve figured it out. But Tyler had gone through the procedure so many times on the Bruins he had probably had grounds to file a grievance with the PA, if he wanted to, so… well, he knew what he needed, and he asked for it, and Jamie tried his best to give it to him. He picked Tyler up from the arena after, he drove him home, he sat with him and watched TV and let Tyler lean on his shoulder. He could do that.

Jordie liked having company too, which Jamie stumbled over the hard way. He gave Jordie space when he got home from his first time, and only realized, like, four hours of grim silence later that maybe space wasn’t what Jordie wanted. Jordie didn’t get called in a lot, but now when he did Jamie tried to do better. TV and leaning on each other. It helped other people, anyway.

Jamie liked to be alone, after. He didn’t want anybody around watching him while he sorted things out in his head, filed them all where they belonged, and tried to forget about them. It made it harder.

**

It takes forever for Jamie to come. It always does, part of what the chemicals do to his body. The heat and need and awful tension won’t break until he comes, though, so he has to push through until it happens. The anonymous body fucking into him comes first, as usual, and then puts his hands on Jamie, feeling him up from behind him. He toys with Jamie’s balls, fingers him fast and slow, works oversensitive skin until it chafes. He never says a word, and Jamie doesn’t, either, just broken noises against the table and the little gasps and moans he can’t control.

When he finally gets off, splattering jizz and sweat on the table and his stomach, the guy steps back, one hand drifting down the back of Jamie’s thigh in a vague caress. The door opens and closes, and then it’s quiet again.

Jamie can hear himself breathing, loud and ragged and catching on sobs here and there. He’s trembling a little as his body tries to find its equilibrium. Soreness begins to cut through the sex haze. His eyes sting from all the sweat.

It’s going to be a while before Keith comes back to undo the cuffs and the collar. The end of the procedure always involves staying alone in the room for ten or fifteen minutes, maybe more. The video said it was to let the chemicals finish clearing his system. Jamie thinks it’s more likely to be some kind of thing where he’s supposed to take the time to think about what he did, and how to do better.

Mostly he just thinks about how he wants a shower, and to go home. Maybe that’s why he keeps ending up back here.

**

“You’re our most valuable assets,” one of the GMs said, at one of the weird exhausting dinners they had sometimes where players and management and league people were supposed to get together and learn to understand each other. “We want to help you reach your full potential as players. That’s really what all of this is about.”

Jamie knew that wasn’t true, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on the way. Couldn’t quite find the words. Articulate it.

That was why he was a player and not a league guy, probably. Not a brain but a body.

**

Keith comes back and undoes the cuffs, unclips the collar, helps him stand up straight again. “Shower is right next door,” he says, as if Jamie doesn’t know that. “Your clothes and your phone are waiting for you, and the cab will be here in twenty minutes.”

Jamie doesn’t say anything, just nods, and goes. He turns the water as hot as it will go and lets it pound on his body, easing the muscles that cramped up from being bent over for so long, rinsing away the sweat and come, loosening the tension in his throat until he can breathe almost right.

He gets dressed, combs his hair off his forehead with his fingers, and goes outside to wait. He has missed texts—one from Jordie requesting that he let him know when he gets home, one from Tyler asking him to come over, another from Tyler saying he talked to Jordie, forget it, he’ll see him tomorrow at practice.

He tucks his phone away in his pocket and gets in the cab, grinding his teeth slowly as they settle into traffic. It’s fine. It’s fine. There’s nothing for him to do at home anyway, he might as well sit here and not think about it. He’ll get home, he’ll eat, he’ll shower again, he won’t think about it, he’ll go to bed. In the morning he’ll pretend he has a blank slate and everything is new. He’ll be calm. He’ll be _settled_.

Settled probably shouldn’t feel quite this much like angry, but what does he know?


End file.
